Your argument,at its sharpest,on the record.
You write the question. We find the person best placed to argue against it. One hour, online, and the recording is yours.
The call is a conversation about what you would want to argue and who could answer it. Nothing is committed on it.
The question is yours
We send a draft resolution with the invitation. It is a starting point, and most people rewrite it, which is the intended use. The question you argue should be the one you have been trying to get people to take seriously.
What we ask of a resolution is that it divides the ground fairly: a genuine position on each side, each held by someone who has done the work. Beyond that the wording is yours, and we build it to carry the real question rather than a simplified version of it.
— Ben Hurlbut, Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
The interlocutor
Serious opposition is scarcer than it should be. Conferences reward agreement. Review is anonymous. Most invitations put you in front of an audience that already shares your premises, and the disagreement that surfaces online is rarely from anyone who has read the literature.
Finding the counterpart is the work we take on. We look for someone whose research has brought them to a different conclusion than yours, close enough to your priors that the disagreement is specific and material.
— Damon Centola, Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology & Engineering, University of Pennsylvania
We run the outreach, then bring you everyone who agreed. You choose. A date is set once you have picked a name.
Debate structure
Adapted from collegiate competitive debate. The structure guarantees something a conversation cannot: every argument you make gets answered, and every argument made against you gets a reply. Nobody runs out the clock, and cross-examination gives you a direct line to the weakest part of the other case.
- 015:00
Affirmative constructive
AffirmativeYou lay out your case in full.
- 024:00
Cross-examination
Negative asksYour opponent questions you directly about what you just said.
- 035:00
Negative constructive
NegativeThey lay out the opposing case and answer yours.
- 044:00
Cross-examination
Affirmative asksYour turn to question them.
- 053:00
Affirmative rebuttal
AffirmativeYou answer their case and defend your own.
- 063:00
Negative rebuttal
NegativeThey do the same.
- 07Optional
Analyst break
Neither sideAnalysts frame what is actually in dispute before the closings.
- 083:00
Affirmative closing
AffirmativeYour final word on why the resolution holds.
- 093:00
Negative closing
NegativeTheir final word on why it does not.
30 minutes of clocked speech, about 45 on the calendar once introductions and the break are in.
All of it is adjustable
Treat the times above as a starting point. We stretch speeches for material that needs room, compress them when it does not, add rounds, drop rounds, or rebuild the sequence entirely. Some researchers want a long constructive and a short close; some want three exchanges instead of two. Tell us on the call and we build the round around the argument.
Scoring, if you want it
Scoring is optional. Plenty of rounds run unscored, as a straight exchange on the record. When you do want it, the audience scores four criteria rather than voting for a winner, which keeps the round evaluated on the argument rather than the delivery.
- Responsiveness
- Use of evidence
- Persuasiveness
- Clarity
After the clock stops
We keep recording. Where the two of you moved, what you would concede, what the other side got right: the part a scored round cannot hold. It is optional and unscored, and for many people it becomes the most useful ten minutes of the session.
The purpose of debate is to make visible to ourselves the things we leave unthought when we talk in the ways we talk.Ben Hurlbut, Arizona State University
On what he wanted from the format, before agreeing to a round
What you leave with
- The record
- The full recording and every clip, owned outright. No restriction, no expiry, no exclusivity. Use it in a syllabus, on a faculty page, in a press kit, or nowhere at all.
- The reach
- Your argument in front of people who would otherwise never encounter it. We promote each round and take it directly to writers and publications covering the subject.
- The production
- A properly made artifact. Multi-camera capture, edited, captioned, and cut into clips, at a level of production most researchers cannot arrange for themselves.
- The exchange
- An hour of genuine opposition from someone who has done the reading. Several people have told us this was the part they valued, independent of anything that happened to the video afterward.
How it works
Five steps, and three of them are entirely ours. Your total commitment is roughly ninety minutes, spread across a few weeks.
- Step 01
The call
What you would want to argue, and who could credibly answer it.
30 min · together - Step 02
The resolution
We draft from the call and send it over. You cut it, sharpen it, or replace it.
One email · you - Step 03
The search
We research and approach the other side. Typically one to three weeks.
Nothing from you - Step 04
The selection
We bring you everyone who agreed. You pick, or send us back out.
One email · you - Step 05
The round
We introduce you both, set a date, and record. Nothing to prepare beforehand.
60 min · you
On the card
A selection of the researchers building resolutions with us right now, and the questions they brought.
Ben Hurlbut
Associate Professor, School of Life Sciences
Arizona State University
ResolutionHeritable human genome editing cannot be used responsibly, given the world it would be released into.
Damon Centola
Elihu Katz Professor of Communication, Sociology & Engineering
University of Pennsylvania
ResolutionSocial change is driven by the structure of the network, not the persuasiveness of the message.
Ari Peskoe
Director, Electricity Law Initiative
Harvard Law School
ResolutionData centers should pay the full cost of the power infrastructure built to serve them.
Benjamin Bergen
Professor of Cognitive Science, Language & Cognition Lab
UC San Diego
ResolutionGeneral artificial intelligence is not here, and "general intelligence" is not a coherent thing to claim.
Garett Jones
Associate Professor of Economics
George Mason University
ResolutionParents should be free to use genetic enhancement on their children.
Robin Hanson
Associate Professor of Economics
George Mason University
ResolutionPrediction markets should govern more of our institutional decisions than they do.
“I'm intrigued, and I really appreciate the format. As a former high school LD debater, it appeals.”
Mary L. Gray, Senior Principal Researcher, Indiana University“Seeing domain experts articulate a position they may or may not believe shows a lot about the value of ideas. It is a great format.”
Benjamin Bergen, Professor of Cognitive Science, UC San Diego“What a great effort you're leading. I think we need more efforts in this vein.”
René Kizilcec, Associate Professor of Information Science, Cornell University
07
Watch a round
The clearest way to judge whether the format suits your material, and what the room actually feels like.
Who's asking
SuperDebate is an independent, nonpartisan league for structured public disagreement. It was built by a former competitive debater and coach whose students became the first national champions to come out of an urban debate league, someone who noticed that after graduation there is nowhere left to do this.
The featured debates are one part of it. There are clubs meeting in cities around the country, an online platform, a tournament circuit, and a first live event in Chicago this fall. Two national champions sit on the advisory board and make sure the rounds actually hold.
We are early, and we would rather you hear that from us than work it out later. The audience is still being built. What is settled is the round itself, the opposition we put across from you, and the recording you own at the end.
— Ben Hurlbut, Arizona State University
Questions
Thirty minutes to find the question
We will talk through what you would want to argue, who could credibly take the other side, and whether the format serves the material. Nothing is committed on the call.
Nothing on the calendar that works? john@superdebate.org reaches John directly.